No, Not that One.

**spoilers**

Congratulations to Hallmark which somehow managed to make a black woman joining the white male-dominated Thunderbirds boring. Totally understandable since this was apparently made with the full cooperation of the Air Force. They wouldn’t want anything but clear skies for our heroine. I totally get it. It was made even more dull by having her love interest totally unrelated to anything to do with her own exciting profession. He owns an Outdoor gear mega-store. Ooof. Isn’t there some way they both could have been Thunderbirds or have had him been otherwise associated with the team in a leadership or other heroic role? I mean, look at him in the poster!

Emma “Blitz” Fitzgerald has been relocated to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas having earned her place on the prestigious Thunderbirds fighter aircraft squadron. Formerly stationed in Japan, she has joined her mother in the suburbs. How fortunate that her mother, a nurse in a doctor’s office just happens to live in the same city that Emma is assigned to! Emma’s daughter Lucy spends her time after school at her grandmother’s workplace until it is time for them to go home. What did she do for child care in Japan? This is where lonely Lucy meets lonely Alice, a young lady who is under the care of a doctor at the practice. She is crazy about aviation and the girls immediately bond over an anime (I think) show called “The Pilot Girls” and the impressive fact that Lucy’s mom is a vaunted Thunderbird.

Emma and Alice’s dad, Paul, meet and, at least on Alice’s dad’s part it is love at first sight. Niall Matter is great at conveying this. Stars practically shoot out of his eyes. It’s hard to tell with Emma, played by Heather Hemmons, because for some reason her acting in this one is as flat as a pancake. I really liked her in Pinch of Portugal, so not sure what was going on here. One thing was probably that given the subject matter, there was no real opportunity for comedy and as a fighter pilot she has to be cool as a cucumber most of the time. Everything goes silky smooth for Emma on the Thunderbirds, with her whole team being supportive and complimentary despite her worries about her performance. So no turbulence there, although the flying sequences in which The Thunderbirds’ repertoire is displayed are beautiful and awesome.

Meanwhile, her love life is also soaring along as smoothly as anything as well. The two girls do a Parent Trap number on Mom and Dad and the two girls bond pretty solidly with each other and their respective parent’s sweetie pies. That is, until Emma gets cold feet having to do with needing to focus on her flying and that she will be re-assigned in two years. It’s very ho-hum until poor Alice has a heart attack and a heart transplant is called for. This has always been a specter in the background as we have learned why Alice is such a frequent visitor to the grandmother’s practice. The two young actresses, especially Georgia Acken as Alice, do a fine job. And the makeup department managed to make Alice look subtly pale and sickly. It’s just something I noticed and wanted to mention since the Hallmark makeup department usually gets failing marks from me. They miraculously find a heart right away, but it is stuck in Arizona due to bad weather and the clock is ticking. We finally get some drama and tension as Emma steps in to save the day. Her heroics are straight out of one of those old-timey movies when aviation was in its infancy. I refer to those movies where our hero/pilot is the last and only hope of getting the life-saving whatever to the child/community, fighting time and dangerous weather with the threat of crashing.

Unfortunately, Emma is not successful. She does not get the heart there on time and all is lost.

Ha Ha just kidding. OF COURSE she fights through danger and bad weather to get the heart to Alice and triumphantly wins the day. Alice is just fine, and Emma and Paul find out that it is very possible Emma will be reassigned to Nellis Air Force base, right there in Las Vegas in a non-Thunderbird capacity when her term is up.

One year later the fighter pilot and the store owner marry in front of a giant version of the American flag, strangely reminiscent of the movie, Patton.

They say some cheesy vows with no officiant or clergy in the vicinity that I could detect, to the cheers of her fellow pilots, families, and presumably Paul’s customers and sales force. And now that they are married, Emma can disclose what her handle “Blitz” means. I almost gave this movie a 5 out of 10. but I have to give credit for the Thunderbird aspect, and the heart attack and transplant drama. Also, instead of flirty shenanigans such as the usual boring baking, flour throwing, or, in the winter, playing in the snow, we get Heather taking Niall up in her jet. So…